Some professor offer to their students that they can receive extra help for a course through video chatting. Professors do this by setting an hour a week or night that they will be online to chat through video to help on homework, or review for an exam. They make this video chat open to a group so that many people can join the chat at once and so she can help everyone. Do you guys think this is a good thing to offer for high school students?
I think that this would be a conservational topic. This is because of the issue teachers getting to close to their students in the wrong way. By opening up a video chat students may accuse a teacher of saying something that they did not. It also might give students the wrong idea. High School students are in the process of growing into young adults and they may get the wrong idea when video chatting from home with their teachers.
On the other hand this would open up many chances for students to get help on their homework if they get stuck at home or help them review for a test. Receiving extra help from their teachers one on one can help students bring up their grades and receive it from their own home. Teachers would pick an hour everyday to be available to their students and students would have the ability to reach out to them for educational help on a topic.
I do not know if this idea is realistic because not all teachers would be willing to do this without extra pay, but I think that is defiantly something that can be considered with much discussion for the future. This would have to be carefully thought out because of all the problems that can occur, but many positives can come from this too.
This sounds like a great help, but of course this would be very dangerous to implement. While this is fantastic, i would have definitely use this option during high school, as you said, students could use this to threaten their teachers. This would be a fantastic idea if students and teachers would sign a contract of some sort, but still, im very on the fence about this idea. During my time in high school, my teachers were very wary about even giving their students email addresses.
ReplyDeleteMichelle, I agree with everything you stated in your post, but I do not believe it is realistic. Sadly, I agree with you that most teachers would probably not be willing to do video chatting for extra help unless teachers were paid extra. In addition, I agree with Amanda’s comment that it would be dangerous. I believe that another alternative that is more realistic would be creating videos, not just to help one student, but the whole class. This way if a student is out, did not take notes, or has messy notes every student could refer to the video created.
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree with the lot of you! An hour is an easy thing to give up for what I see are the incredible benefits. I do not think one hour would constitute a teacher feeling entitled to extra pay, at least I wouldn't. The delicate issue, as you stated, would be understanding the boundaries that are involved in a teacher-student relationship. If a teacher were really scared of the consequences they could potentially require a parent to be present. If it were up to me, I would have the students just email me and I would get back to them. Taking the extra step I think is needs a bit more finesse, but the benefits are worth it.
ReplyDeleteI think that creating a chat room and videos would be a great way to help students, however, I do not think that it would work at a high school level. I think that it works better when students meet face-to-face with teachers before or after school in the classroom. This way the teacher is able to attend the to student's needs directly, without having to wait for the student to type back. Also, I think that it would get a bit hectic in a chat room with numerous students; individual needs would not be met. Also, there are so many different things that could go wrong. A student's computer can be broken or due to bad weather, a student can lose internet connection. If the teacher is providing extra assistance, and in many cases even extra credit for participating, that one student without internet connection or a computer will be at a disadvantage.
ReplyDeleteLike you said, video chatting can be a iffy area when dealing with students'. I think this can be accomplished in a podcast like setting. Say a teacher has a weekly scheduled video chat that is designed specifically to help aid students with their work. The video chat should be public so that other students' who connect can also see both you and the other students talking. Then there should be a private message box that allows students to ask the teacher questions without all of the other students seeing, however, this should be recorded so that there is no possibility of "false accusement". I think if it were set up similar to this, it would be very successful.
ReplyDeleteIf this were to be utilized in a classroom I think it would be very important to record and save copies of all chat sessions just in case there ever was a dispute. However I had a teacher who gave out her personal phone number in class and asked us to call her if we ever had any questions about homework. I found this incredibly strange and intimidating and, although she meant well, it actually had the opposite effect on me. Instead of feeling like I always had a way to reach her, I felt like I should never contact her that way.
ReplyDeleteI do not think that this would be a good idea for teacher and students. I think video chatting is a relationship that may cross the professional relationship that should be present. I also think that the students should be able to email a teacher with a question and the teacher could answer the student's question over an email instead of video chatting. I do think that students could use this method to communicate with other students rather than the teacher. The peer-to-peer relationship could be contained over a video chat and would not be crosssing any professional lines.
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